Narcissists Always Do This After You’ve Figured Them Out

#4: Now let’s talk about how they’ll redefine forgiveness as erasing the past.

This one shows up once you’ve realized that it’s the same apology or faux apology more likely. But once you realize it’s the same story for the same thing on repeat, once all the damage is done, the next word they’ll reach for is forgiveness when there’s no other way out. And it’s not an apology. It’s really just a way for them to avoid accountability. They may say things like, “Why are you still bringing that up?” Or, “I thought we moved past this.” Or worse, “I guess you’re just not capable of forgiving.” And again, it’s that same old Uno reverse because now the pressure is on you to let it go and move on or to prove that you’re the bigger person.

But real forgiveness doesn’t mean pretending it didn’t happen, which is exactly what they’re after when they say things like, “Let’s just have a clean slate,” or, “Let’s pretend none of this ever happened.” But not only is that easier said than done, but it’s also impossible when the thing that you’re trying to forget keeps happening over and over again. It’s no longer just something that happened in the past. It’s something that continues to happen in the present and future. So, of course, you can’t let it go, and that clean slate is actually impossible.

And this is one of those situations where they’ll use your values against you. You want to be someone who’s kind and forgiving. And I see this struggle so often in people who are Christian because forgiveness plays a big role in Christianity. And I know you’ll already know this, but sometimes it helps just to hear it out loud. Forgiving doesn’t necessarily mean that you continue with this person. You can forgive them from afar. You can forgive and not forget. But this is one that narcissists will push hard for. Especially if they know that it’s valuable to you.

But either way, really, they’ll push hard for it because if they can just get you to buy into their act, not to actually forgive them, because they’re not actually sorry and because they’re going to keep doing the same thing. Of course, it’s impossible to actually forgive them because that wound keeps opening. But if they can get you to buy into the concept of forgiveness, they can always throw it in your face as something that you fell short in; you failed, you were supposed to forgive them, but you didn’t. So then it becomes your problem.

Listen, if you’ve ever been told that the only way to heal is to forget, or if you’ve been told that having boundaries makes you bitter, none of that was in the name of forgiveness, and it definitely wasn’t coming from a good place. What it was was the narcissist trying to erase the past and shut down your feelings and your right to stand up for yourself.

#5: Now let’s talk about how the narcissist will redefine the word truth.

Because to the rest of us, it’s a definition that matches reality. But to a narcissist, it means loyalty to whatever they say happened. And this is where things get a little slippery because by now you’re not just reacting to one bad moment. You’re starting to see it all as a pattern. And that is exactly what they can’t afford to have happen. So after love, respect, boundaries, and forgiveness have all been redefined, they go after the biggest one of all, the truth. So according to the narcissist, your perspective is wrong. Your memory is flawed. And of course, your lived experience is twisted by your emotional state because you’re just too over emotional to see the truth for what it is. At least that’s what they want you to believe.

But none of their arguments are based on facts. And really, at the root of it, it’s all about allegiance. It’s about loyalty to them and whatever they say is the truth. Like, how dare you question them, even if you saw it with your own eyes. They want you to be loyal to whatever version of the truth keeps them in control. And if you step outside of that version, it’s a betrayal in their eyes. But when you’re not allowed to speak your mind and you can’t have conversations about things that actually happened, it’s easy to lose trust in yourself.

And that’s the real damage that we’re talking about here. Because when someone can bend the truth to serve their story and punish you for remembering it differently, it really starts to be about who gets to decide what’s real. And the truth is, we should be honest about our experiences and we should all be able to trust ourselves. But that can never happen with a narcissist.

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